Court Upsets Layoff Plan For Budget

In a victory for Gov. Jim Florio, the New Jersey Supreme Court ruled today that the Legislature could cut the budget but could not dictate which state workers should be laid off to make ends meet.

The Legislature had envisioned layoffs for high-paid nonunion managers. Instead, many union members lost their jobs.

"The Legislature may at times overlap the authority of the executive, but it may never override the executive authority to manage its own affairs," said Associate Justice Marie L. Garibaldi, who wrote the court opinion in the unanimous decision. "The Legislature's attempt to 'micromanage' the staffing and resource allocations in administering the appropriated funds was a serious intrusion on the Governor's authority and ability to perform his constitutionally delegated functions."

Barring a reversal by a Federal appellate court, today's decision means that nearly 1,500 state workers who were laid off between July and early October because of budget cuts have exhausted their last legal chance at regaining their jobs.

"I am gratified the Supreme Court has upheld the Governor's duty under the State Constitution to implement the budget," Mr. Florio said in a statement. "My original budget would have avoided any layoffs, but the budget that emerged from the legislative process required layoffs." Chief Plaintiff

A spokesman for the Communications Workers of America, the largest state employees' union and the chief plaintiff in the lawsuit that prompted today's ruling, said that the union was considering an appeal but that it would first ask the Governor to rehire the laid-off workers.

"No one ever should have been laid off, demoted or transferred," said the union spokesman, Vincent Trivelli. "The Governor made the decision to do it and he should make the decision to rehire them."

The ruling came after a protracted fight between Mr. Florio, a Democrat, and the Republican-controlled Legislature over the 1993 budget. The Republican-drafted budget cut $1.1 billion from the Governor's proposed $15.8 billion spending plan, and to help balance the books, it mandated about 1,300 layoffs among nonunion managers earning $50,000 or more a year.

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Mr. Florio vetoed the budget, but the Republicans, with two-thirds majorities in both chambers of the Legislature, easily upset the veto, and the new budget took effect last July 1, the beginning of the state's fiscal year.

The Governor, however, refused to comply with the Republicans' dictate on the layoffs and instead laid off 1,459 state workers, two-thirds of them union members earning less than $50,000 a year. A Court Test

The communications workers' union and Assemblyman John Hartmann, a freshman Republican whose Mercer County district includes nearly half of the state's 70,000 employees, filed suit, contending that the Governor had broken the law by ignoring the legislation protecting rank-and-file state workers from layoffs.

That set up a court test of the separation of powers between the legislative and executive branches.

Traditionally, the Legislature has approved the budget and the Governor has determined how the money is spent. No previous legislature had ventured to include language in the budget, which is a law, that specified from where and how layoffs should be achieved.

The court ruled today that such language was only discretionary, not mandatory.

"Our role is not to judge whose plan was better," the court said. "That power and duty belongs ultimately to the people, who through their elected representatives and officials in both the legislative and executive branches can determine what kind of government they want.

"For better or for worse, decisions on how to use the funds appropriated by the Legislature to staff executive agencies are for the Governor to make, and the Legislature may not dictate whom he may, or may not, lay off."

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A version of this article appears in print on December 30, 1992, on Page B00004 of the National edition with the headline: Court Upsets Layoff Plan For Budget. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe